This invention relates to racks for use in the storage area of a truck or a freight car of a train, to facilitate storage of transported goods. More particularly, the invention relates to a collapsible rack for such use, having rotatably mounted legs which pivot between an operative extended position and a retracted position for compactly storing the rack
Trucks, such as tractor trailers, and trains transport large quantities of goods. The goods are typically stacked from the floor to the ceiling in the storage area of the trucks or the freight cars of the train. The goods located at the bottom of the stack are usually subjected to substantial weight from goods stacked higher in the stack. The force of the weight may damage the goods located at the bottom of the stack. This is particularly true for delicate goods which cannot withstand heavy loads.
To overcome this problem, racks have been developed to reduce the load created from stacking goods from the floor to the ceiling of the storage area. These prior art racks typically have a bottom support surface and four legs extending upwardly from the support surface. See for example Daly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,678 and Talarico, U.S. Pat. No. 4,199,069. The racks disclosed in these references are nestable, and therefore require at least two racks to be stacked contiguously to provide an upper support surface to reduce the size of the stack by half.
When the goods have been transported to their destination, it is desirable to collapse the racks to a retracted position for compact storage. Past attempts have been directed to collapsible racks. See for example Murray, U.S. Pat. No. 3,499,398 and Gondar, U.S. Pat. No. 2,498,414. However, these prior art collapsible racks incorporate complicated collapsing mechanisms or the use of pins and the like which are subject to fatigue and break down.
It is further desirable to have a rack that can be stacked for storage with like racks so as to be easily accessible for lifting and transporting to other locations. It is desirable to elevate the rack for access to lift machines such as fork lifts.
The collapsible rack of this invention overcomes the problems associated with the previously developed racks.